Obviously the economy is one of the biggest concerns when discussing alt accounts, I never disagreed with that. What I was trying to say is that many of the concerns being brought up already exist to some degree without alts: plenty of afk-focused gameplay, pile ups at harvesting areas, New players joining and not seeing active interaction, economy inflation. All that you've mentioned can get even worse with alts, I understand that. My point was that alt accounts would not magically create those issues from nothing, they already exist.   I was only bringing up gameplay loops and farming methods since players join and leave because everyone is hidden and farming, I'd think that points toward a broader gameplay issue worth discussing independently of alts, that's just what my point was there. Though I also don’t think most players browsing Gmod servers deeply analyze whether numbers are inflated or not like Jouaram just did. They see activity and are more likely to click. They see activity within the server, they're more likely to hang around. That’s just kind of what happens from my experience.   I'm obviously not a "Garry's Mod DarkRP Expert (Certified, Qualified)" I'm not gonna have this whole thing figured out on my own. I fully understand the logistics concern. Restrictions, linked punishments, reward limitations, transfer rules, alt detection, etc. would absolutely create extra work for staff and development. I think that's the strongest argument against allowing alts along with economy impact, but it's why I thought this would be a worthy discussion because I don't believe that the concept itself is impossible, but I understand how much work all I've been suggestion will be.  Though I'll just bring up one more time that plenty of servers already manage these exact issues while allowing alts in some form. Some do it poorly, some do it well. That doesn’t mean Aether has to follow them, but it does show the idea itself can be manageable with the right restrictions, I get that it might not be the best fit for how Aether works. I thought it'd be a good topic since it might call for more polishing with everything mentioned about the server, though if like Vetes said, we believe what I've mentioned in the beginning of this post along with what others have been bringing up about the server, are not issues or signs of upcoming problems, that we won't have to worry about if we never allow alts, then I'll trust and side with that.  In my opinion the big thing that'll complicate things it's the amount of afk farming options on here, you'd have to be on a few lines to balance 20 meth machines from alts so it wouldn't really be that beneficial to run alts for more active farming options like that, it's one of the various ways some servers balance it well, their farming methods are more active like treasure hunter and meth machines for example. Having a bunch of alts shouldn't be that strong, you can't balance 20 meth machines for a long length of time, but having a few extra is of course a game changer, which is already loaned around from player to player. Though at the end of the day, I’m not arguing that alts are consequence free, every concern is valid. I just don’t think the discussion is as black and white as “alts = server ruined.” There’s a middle ground between unrestricted abuse and outright prohibition that other servers have already experimented with successfully. I get that it's a lot of work I'm asking for here I get that, I just figured that the idea was worth exploring since it's worked very well for these other servers is all.   Though I kinda agree with Jouaram about it being more accessible to people with not as much influence or friends. Like back few months ago when I was still new, sitting in a base with Err a ton of cig machines from afk friends, of course I wanted some of that, he let me get 500 cigs then he took over and greedy dude hogged the things for the rest of night. 😭 That was pretty discouraging that I didn't have the influence or the money to buy ents off of people like he did and farm, I've never really farmed after that tbh, nobody finds me farming. I just ended up buying permas and money off of people for irl and traded around, so I think what Jouaram said is kinda real for new players lol.  

I don't disagree that some would do that, but I think they're not leaving because of the AFKs they are leaving because of the lack of interactions like if there were a ton of AFKs (I joined one of the largest servers on an alt to test today as an example) they had 101 players online with 37 alt/afk accounts that I could find which is more than our entire pop as AFKs but because they have high pop they get new players clicking and joining which snowballs into them interacting with each-other and generally just more flow overall. You could argue that their server is just better and more people want to play it but you can use battlemetrics to see how many people actually even attempt to join the server, the servers which are high on the list get roughly 10x the amount of new player clicks as the ones down the list. I also want to state I don't think this is at all necessary or a need for Aether but I do think it's a good thing to discuss.

It is different in my eyes because some people would be able to use alts to get a pretty significant advantage ontop of also getting/buying entities from other real players. Let's use Jouaram's example: In Jouaram's example if we include the ability of having alts then it becomes AFK Aculon giving Papa Waffle his entities but also AFK Aculon Alt #1 giving Papa Waffle his entities plus Papa Waffle Alt #1 giving his entities. Etc. This ofc would depend on whatever restrictions are set forth but I think would also just complicate things and again I don't think it'd be great for the economy. I already sortof mentioned it, but collecting from other peoples' printers was heavily nerfed because of how lucrative it was and because they were mostly from AFK players. I don't really get what you're saying, the issue isn't our current gameplay loop. How is the economy not the biggest factor when talking about alts when that'd be the main benefit/point of a player having an alt account on the server? I didn't bring up these concerns to indicate there's a problem with them as they currently exist, I brought them up because having alts could exaggerate it to the point of becoming a problem. Sure, you can add restrictions, but then it becomes the logistics nightmare that I've mentioned already. I can understand how it may bring more players overall to Aether, and majority of them are going to do the same "where is everyone" and leave 5 minutes later when they discover the AFK pile at the miner/lumberjack area that I've seen time and time again (again, irrelevant of how we currently treat AFK players, wherever they're put, that's not the main issue here and would be again exaggerated by more alts/afkers). Hopefully maybe just 1 or 2 of those extra joins that occurred because of the bolstered false player count may actually stay. But I have to ask you Jouaram... at what cost!? AT WHAT COST!?

I think there are some good valid points but the economy/income one I don't think is due to the fact of how many people rent or just give their entities to other people; if anything this would just make it more fair for players who have less influence or friends to get those entities.  The biggest issue to me is the misleading part but honestly it's just us trying to be the better person which doesn't necessarily mean good results, it is not implied these servers use alts especially the top 3-4 it is a fact and it benefits them greatly off and on peak hours. 

+1  Not allowed in raids might as well make it the next dairy dangerous